Yosharian

1) I wanted to try a pure Barb to see what the high level abilities are like, they seem quite interesting. Corpse Eater gets some very nice buffs in Elrics mod 2) as I said in the post I'm using Unity Console, I changed that build to Wizard anyway 4) again, Unity Console 5) what do you find useful in pure Ranger? Seems underwhelming

Hello, I am trying to build a second party for my Deadfire guide (LINK), my first party was built for Veteran: Watcher Psyblade (Tactician/Beguiler) - striker/disabler Serafen Swashbuckler (Unbroken / Trickster) - tanky riposter Rekke Templar (Priest of Wael / Goldpact Knight) - tanky healer Tekehu Ascetic (Helwalker / Watershaper) - glass cannon nuker (he died a lot lol) Mercenary Shepherd (Ghostheart / Goldpact Knight) - ranged striker/healer It was fun but I'm wanting to do something a bit different for my next run which will be POTD using Community Patch (+Extra addon) and Elric's Balance Polishing mod (LINK). I'm using some of @Boeroer's builds as a starting point but adapting them a bit maybe. Using Unity Console to change companion classes obviously. Watcher single-class Corpse Eater - tanky striker, especially focusing on killing squishy casters etc Rekke? single-class Wizard - not sure how to build this yet but I know I want a pure Wizard Serafen Psion/Troubadour - pure caster build (based on Ceaseless Siren) Fassina single-class or multi-class (?) Spearcaster Arcane Archer (based on Pindown Poet) Maia single-class or multi-class (?) Gunhawk, not sure what to do with this yet, just want to use guns with Maia cos it's going to be an RDC run The way I visualise this party working is that the watcher barb and mass summons from the chanter(s) form a screen of meat shields to allow the casters/ranged strikers to attack with impunity. The ranger pets are there as a back-up plan if enemies break into the back line. So I have some concept for what the party looks like but I'm a bit rough on some of the details and would really appreciate some suggestions. @thelee if you have the time to take a look I would appreciate it. I'm open to suggestions outside of what I wrote (for example changing the barb to a multi-class) if anyone has a particular idea.

Oh damn, it's worse than I thought! I missed the crit thing. Alright, I guess I will rethink things haha

Hello Boeroer! Been a while. I recently watched the video you and Aestus made for Deadfire, and it piqued my interest. Your builds are pretty interesting. I'm getting the itch to give Deadfire another try, but after trawling the Nexus and rebuilding my mod list, I came across Elric's Balance Polishing mod and it poses a conundrum. I definitely want to use it, but it does significantly nerf some things, including a couple of mechanics you use in your 5 builds. Here is the link if you're unfamiliar with the mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/438 (the nerfs are listed in green writing) At the moment I am looking at the Ceaseless Siren, Bloody Parry, Fountain of Woe and Pindown Poet builds. I would like to get your opinion on which of these builds might get significantly affected by Elric's mod. At the moment all I can see is that the Pindown Poet would get slightly hurt by the fix to not apply the Chanter reload speed phrase twice (but it gets buffed from 20% to 25% so it's not a huge nerf). Apart from that I can't see anything that would significantly hurt the builds?

Oh haha. I didn't notice that since I used Unity Console to add them to Rekke. Good to know

1) I just feel like Mule Kick is a better way to spend resources? 2) Interesting, I'm not sure I agree though because I just finished SSS and in some of the fights Serafen needed every inch of durability I've given him. Maybe because I'm a lazy player, to be fair. I see what you're going for, anyway, but I prefer to have him go all out on defense and leave the offense to my other characters. 3) Yeah I've not used that spell a lot to be fair. I could probably optimise some of these spell selections a lot more. 4) Ah well originally he was using that lightning voulge whatever it's called, but yeah now that im using arquebus early on, Swift Flurry isn't too good until later. Bleh I can't be bothered respeccing to optimise it though. I've ditched casting the Blight summon but more because his recovery time makes it inefficient, otherwise i found it quite useful. Anyway again there's probably some spell optimization I could do here if I was bothered. 5) Well, Red Hand is only piercing damage, and one of the cool things about this build is that it does a bonkers amount of fire damage. So even against pierce immunes it's still effective. Again, lazy player. But I've not tested it against Red Hand so I can't comment too much. The idea behind Goldpact is to give her more AR, because she needs to have enough fire AR for Dragon's Dowry backfires to underpenetrate. As for Ghost Heart, it's a personal preference, I can't stand the pet constantly dying in stupid situations and she can afford to spend class resource on summoning so it's fine.

Dunno if this is useful to anyone but I figured I might as well post it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2220432833 Any feedback is appreciated.

I'm coming back a little late to this, but the physical attacks this character puts out are so effective that it's kinda putting the rest of its arsenal to shame. And the bear is super useful as a resummonable tank. I'm kind of leaning towards abandoning the Bloodmage aspect altogether which is ironic considering I started out trying to complement a caster build, but oh well. Looking at either pure ranger now or something else. Boeroer your Bleak Walker idea is actually really interesting now. Question though: does Sworn Enemy stack with Marked Prey? Edit: it does, sweet..

I mean you say that but upgraded Dragon's Dowry deals 15 fire damage on a 15% chance per attack, it's not insignificant, also there are not many other good cloaks available for the build Trolls Stitched heals 5hp per 12 seconds, DD will deal more than that back to my guy in fire damage right?

I'm using the Community Patch so AA scaling isn't really an issue? so what's the verdict on Ranger, yea or nay?

L01 [PL1] L02 Resilient Companion L03 Vicious Companion L04 [PL2] Gunner, Two-Handed Style (Wizard) L05 Marksman L06 Protective Companion L07 [PL3] L08 Merciless Companion L09 Predator's Sense L10 [PL4] L11 L12 Stalker's Link L13 [PL5] L14 Practiced Healer L15 Driving Flight L16 [PL6] L17 Survival of the Fittest L18 L19 [PL7] L20 This is what i came up with for passives, no idea which Ranger actives would be useful really

Why don't you like AA? I was thinking of using Maia for this build so Gunhawk is an option ALso if you could elaborate on those passives I'd be very grateful

what's dawnstar's blessing?

I see. What about Ranger?

Oh and one other question, Fury Shaper gets a penalty when the totem is destroyed, does this also occur when the totem's duration is up?

So overall is Fury Shaper a good option here or should I stick with single class BM?

Yeah this was my worry, that I'd be losing much from multiclassing and not gaining all that much, however perhaps multiclassing e.g. Fury Shaper is weaker overall, but more interesting? I'm only playing on Veteran, so having the ultimate build is not necessarily the endgame here. Also "You can boost the PL scaling BM regen by quite a bit if you really want to" can you elaborate on that

So I got a Blood Mage build, this is what I got so far (was considering using Fassina hence the unique culture), this is just posted as a reference since it's mostly stuff from the old build that was an Evoker: So as you can see, it's a primary caster that fires nasty ranged physical damage when it's not casting spells, I'm trying to have my cake and eat it basically. My issue is that since I moved from Evoker to Blood Mage there's a lot of empty levels since the Empower talents are useless. So, I considered multiclassing. I want something to complement the ranged attacker style of the build without moving away too hard from the caster style. Things I was considering: 1) Barbarian, probably Fury Shaper: I read this and was inspired (thanks Boeroer): Not interested in Berserker, but Fury Shaper looks interesting. My issues with this are that I'm not sure how it will interact with a firearms user since they don't have 'recovery' per se, I'm wondering if that recovery reset will get wasted a lot of the time, also does Frenzy / Frenzy Totem even affect reload times? 2) Ranger, probably Arcane Archer or Gunhawk: initially I looked at Ranger for obvious reasons, Gunner talent and other good stuff. However I'm wondering if this is gonna complement the spellcasting that much, really. 3) Don't multiclass at all and just keep it single class cos the gains aren't worth it? 4) Chanter or Monk? Dunno. PS: I'm not interested in any of the other classes Thanks for reading

Wow that's really incredible

as a side question, does Rekvu's Scorched Cloak really turn all burn damage into healing? I'm thinking about using it to negate the self fire damage from Dragon's Dowry

as always thank you for the useful information guys

ok so in layman's terms if i combine the -20% from garb plus the -10% from acina's am i getting more or less than a 30% reduction

as title, apologies for dumb topic bonus question: can you stack effects that reduce reload time, such as Acina's + Sharpshooter's Garb?

Ah right. I was thinking to have Armored Grace, Contendor's Armor, and an armor-penalty-reducing pet. I'm not sure if Mob Stance would have much benefit then, because I only have limited engagement slots. I also don't know how much DEX would be optimal in this situation. I thought 15 DEX would be best, but I'm not sure. I'd have to reduce my STR to boost it more.

Alright I updated the build again Some thoughts: 1) spare discipline will be spent spamming mule kick or clear out depending on whether im against groups or single enemies 2) cipher focus is on casting affliction-causing spells that are boosted by void helm and the empty soul, any spare focus will be spent spamming puppet master, re-upping borrowed instinct and casting ancestor's memory lategame... if i end up being unable to use up my focus then i'll switch out superior deflection for disintegration or something